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Scientists tag another shark with a dorsal fin camera prototype in Point Reyes last year. The tags are being placed on great white sharks along the California coast as a way to get first-ever video footage of their behavior after they migrate offshore to the White Shark Cafe between California and Hawaii. The final tags that will be deployed in the winter of 2017-18 will be smaller than the prototype. (Monterey Bay Aquarium -- Contributed)

A scientist tags a white shark with a camera on its dorsal fin, last winter at the Farallon Islands. (Monterey Bay Aquarium -- Contributed)

For the first time, scientists are able to see from a white shark’s point of view, from a new video camera that attaches to a shark’s dorsal fin. (Monterey Bay Aquarium -- contributed)

This still is taken from a video camera attached to the dorsal fin of a white shark in the Farallon Islands last year. (Monterey Bay Aquarium -- Contributed)

MONTEREY >> The first videos filmed on a new camera that attaches to a shark’s dorsal fin were released this week by researchers from Monterey.

The test footage was shot in the Farallon Islands and South Africa using a specially engineered camera that clamps to the shark’s fin, developed by scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. The goal is to film what happens at the White Shark Cafe, which so far has been a mystery for scientists.

The White Shark Cafe, as it was unofficially named in 2002 by MBARI scientists, refers to an “ocean desert” halfway between Mexico and Hawaii that has little food or plant life. Yet for some reason, great white sharks gather there every April and May, said Sal Jorgensen, a Monterey Bay Aquarium senior research scientist who is helping to develop the camera.

“Sharks leave here (the California coast) after gorging on seals for a while and then they head out to the White Shark Cafe. We don’t know what’s going on out there,” Jorgensen said. “It could be somewhere where you might get a bite to eat or it might be where you meet someone special.”

“It’s kind of like Burning Man for white sharks,” he said. “You’ve got all these sharks in the Bay Area heading out to this desert area, and we don’t know exactly what they’re doing out there but they go every year.”

Most likely, it’s where white sharks mate, he said. Female white sharks give birth in the summer, offshore of Southern California. The math makes sense, since the gestational period of white sharks is estimated to be a little more than a year, he said.

Scientists have never observed white shark mating behavior, and he hopes the camera will give an unprecedented look. The test footage already gives insights, he said.

“What you see is just the tip of the snout on the bottom of your view frame and it’s moving back and forth slowly. It’s corresponding with the tail beating back and forth, and then with the little particles in the water it feels like you’re going through an asteroid field,” Jorgensen said.

Every so often, the shark calmly passes fish, birds, other sharks and wildlife. Sometimes it investigates the water’s surface. And very rarely, it leaps out and chomps, he said.

“We’ve heard a lot of things in Discovery Channel shows about shark feeding frenzies and this and that, but in fact, these sharks tend to be very discerning and careful about when they spend the extra energy to burst up to the surface to grab something,” Jorgensen said. “They’re a lot more picky than we thought.”

Scientists have attached cameras to sharks before, but only for a few days. The new camera attaches for months, for the journey to the White Shark Cafe, then starts filming when the shark arrives.

The migration from the California coast to the open ocean and back lasts nine months. Once the shark returns, the camera must release precisely and have enough power to signal researchers for retrieval.

On top of that engineering challenge, the camera must withstand depths of 1,000 meters, said Thom Maughan, an MBARI embedded software engineer on the team.

“That’s when you want to hit your head against the wall,” Maughan said. “This is an animal that’s always in motion, so how can you use that to your advantage, is how an engineer looks at it.”

For the past two years, he has worked on ways to prevent biofouling — the accumulation of microorganisms, plants, algae and animals on the camera.

“(Another) challenge, if we’re on the animal and it’s feeding time, when it leaps out of the water it (the camera) has to stay on. It’s a hard problem. We’re working through some iterations about how to do that and it’s really fun,” Maughan said.